Quotes by famous astronauts about the Earth and their experience in outer space.

Have you ever felt homesick? Well, here I’ve prepared amazing quotations said by the greatest astronauts being thousands of kilometers away from the Earth.

“When I watched the horizon, I saw the abrupt, contrasting transition from the earth’s light-colored surface to the absolutely black sky.
I enjoyed the rich color spectrum of the earth. It is surrounded by a light blue aureole that gradually darkens, becoming turquoise, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black.”

– Yuri Gagarin, Cosmonaut,
First Human in Space

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth.
I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth.
I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”

– Neil Armstrong, Astronaut,
First Human to Walk on the Moon

“I thought at one point, if you could be up in heaven,
this is how you would see the planet.
And then I dwelled on that and said, no, it’s more beautiful than that.
This is what heaven must look like. I think of our planet as a paradise.
We are very lucky to be here.”

– Mike Massimino,
NASA Astronaut

“In the future, I would like to be more of an advocate for animal conservation. Every single part of the Earth reacts with every other part. It’s one thing. Every little animal is important in that ecosystem.
[Seeing the planet from above] makes you realize that, and makes you want to be a little more proactive in keeping it that way.
If I could get every Earthling to do one circle of the Earth, I think things would run a little differently.”

– Karen Nyberg

“The overriding impression I got of life on Earth is how robust it is.
Life has managed to essentially completely cover this planet in all sorts of different places—it finds a way.”

– ED LU

“As we got further and further away, it [the Earth] diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine.
That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man.”

– James B. Irwin,
Astronaut, Apollo Program

“The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic.
The Earth was absolutely round.
I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space. ”